Collections

This collection was purchased at an auction in southeastern Connecticut from a family estate along with Walker’s magician’s trunk filled with his apparatus, his puppets, books on magic and ventriloquism, his clock repair kit, and broadsides advertising his performances. The trunk and its contents and the clock repair kit are in the museum collection. The broadside and books are part of the library collection and a photographic portrait of Albert went to graphics. Albert kept a regular diary from 1856-1895, with a few missing individual volumes. In the diaries he recorded the weather, his activities such as farming, making flatware and stripping tobacco, attending or playing his fiddle for dances, fights with his father, birth, marriages and deaths in town, and comments on local politics, fires and explosions, and national events such as the death of Abraham Lincoln. The name William Griswold appears frequently in his entries before 1865, but his role in Albert’s life is not yet illuminated. The diaries after 1867 are only sparsely filled and give the impression that he eventually assumed the role of gentleman farmer. A partial transcript of the diaries is available in the collection file in the archivist’s office.

The album was compiled by Henry Sanford Bicknell. It includes letters to David Roberts from William Allan, Samuel Austin, Edward Hodges Baily, William Boxall, John Britton, John Burnet, Robert William Buss, Augustus Wall Callcott, George Cattermole, Alfred Edward Chalon, Henry Barnard Chalon, William Collins, Edward William Cooke, George Cooke, Charles West Cope, John Doyle, Thomas Duncan, Charles Lock Eastlake, James Elmes, William Etty, Myles Birket Foster, Andrew Geddes, Frederick Goodall, Francis Grant, Thomas Grieve, Joseph Gwilt, James Duffield Harding, Philip Hardwick, George Hayter, Solomon Alexander Hart, George Harvey, John Henning, John Rogers Herbert, Henry Howard, William John Huggins, Alexander Johnston, Samuel Joseph, William Kidd, John Prescott Knight, George Lance, Richard James Lane, John Leech, Charles Lees, Charles Robert Leslie, John Frederick Lewis, William Linton, Henry Liverseege, Samuel Lover, Horatio Macculloch, Patrick MacDowell, Robert McInnes, Daniel Maclise, Daniel Macnee, William Calder Marshall, John Martin, William Mulready, Frederick Newenham, William John Newton, John Buonarotti Papworth, Thomas Phillips, Henry William Pickersgill, William Henry Playfair, Samuel Prout, Richard Redgrave, Ramsay Richard Reinagle, Edward Villiers Rippingille, Richard Rothwell, John Christian Schetky, George Gilbert Scott, Martin Arthur Shee, William Simpson, Clarkson Stanfield, Robert Thorburn, William Tite, Charles Turner, J.M.W. Turner, Thomas Uwins, Edward Matthew Ward, Henry Weekes, Richard Westmacott, David Wilkie, James Francis Williams, Chares Heath Wilson, and William Wyon.